Krakow Film Festival is one of the oldest film events dedicated to documentary, animated and short fiction films in Europe. During 7 festival days viewers have an opportunity to watch about 250 films from Poland and abroad. Films are presented in competitions and in special sections like retrospectives, thematic cycles, archive screenings. Festival is accompanied by exhibitions, concerts, open air screenings and meetings with the filmmakers. Every year Krakow Film Festival hosts about 500 Polish and international guests: directors, producers, film festival programmers and numerous audience from Krakow.
Krakow Film Festival is the oldest film festival in Poland, organized every year since 1961 as the national short film competition, later also an international one and finally only international, made a successful comeback as a double-barreled event once again in 1997.
In order to simplify the operation of the Festival as well as the overly complex numbering, we have decided to inaugurate in 2001 both competitions under a common name: Krakow Film Festival. The Krakow Short Film Festival is among Europe's oldest events dedicated to documentary, animation and other short film forms.
The unique character of the Krakow Festival derives not only from the programme of the competition screenings, the Dragon and Hobby Horse prizes awarded by both the International and Polish jury, the FIPRESCI and the FICC awards or numerous other prizes granted outside festival regulations, but also from the programme of accompanying events.
In 2007 Krakow Film Festival has announced a new competitive section presenting feature – length documentaries. The idea of this section came out of the changes in the world documentary industry and increased interest in feature – length documentaries which was observed in previous years. The audience of Krakow Film Festival have always favoured off-competition screenings presenting those documentaries. That’s why the organizers of the Festival did not hesitate to bring to life new section. Ten films, selected from amongst 200, competed for the Golden Horn during the 47th KFF. The Grand Prix has been presented to Jeroen Berkvens from Netherlands for his film „Jimmy Rosenberg – the Father, the Son and the Talent”.
The fact that the Krakow Film Festival has been officially recognized by FIAPF, the European Film Academy and the AMPAS only confirms its reputation and high esteem it’s field in; consequently, the films awarded at Krakow are automatically eligible for the European Film Awards and the Oscars in the short films categories.